DIY: An Eyeball Necklace for Halloween!

I just finished making my third Halloween craft of the season! I shared my new Halloween dress in this blog, complete with a video tutorial, here. Then I made another dress...which you can see a sneak peek of in this photo. I can't wait to share it with you but until then...let's make an eyeball necklace! Here's what you'll need:

* Large wooden beads

* White and black acrylic paint

* Skewers

* High gloss Mod-Podge

* An assortment of beads

* Elastic string

* Paint markers

* Flat paintbrush

And here's a little how-to:

My only real tips: 

* Work on these in batches. This will allow dry time between the white paint, the iris, the pupils, the highlights and the red veins. Thankfully, the paint markers dry quickly!

* Lay out your design on a plate. This will keep the beads from rolling all over the place.

* Don't worry about 'mess-ups'. In the end, no one will notice a wonky circle or a misplaced bloody vein. Trust me! 

* Have fun! Do this as a craft while watching your favorite horror flick or listening to a spooky podcast to get you in the mood!

Making these necklaces on elastic means I can easily put them together! And slide 'em over my big ole head.

I already debuted my necklace with my new dress at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios! It was fun to dress all creepy for the occasion. 

You'll have to know if you decide to give these a try! And stay tuned...I have so many Halloweenie crafts coming your way. 

Until then...I have my eye on you!

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DIY: Top Favorite Fall Crafts

Fall is my very favorite. Halloween is my very favorite. If you've been around this blog for a couple of sessions then you know that it's this time of year that I'm usually firing up the hot glue gun, busting out the Celluclay and creating things that go bump in the night. This year...well, I'm just a little busy with other things to craft any spooky goodness. However, I do believe I'm pretty well stocked in all things frightening. So I thought I'd put them all together in one big ole blog post! All links will take you back to the original post which, more than likely, will have a how-to video. Happy Crafting!

1. Probably one of my all time favorite fall creations were these Zombie Head Planters. This was at the height of Walking Dead/Zombie popularity (remember when EVERY movie was a zombie movie?! Not that I'm complaining but, really, how many zombies movies do we need?!). I loved creating the expressions for these dead dudes!

2. These Halloween miniature pieces were fun to craft on an afternoon. The pumpkin dude was created from paper clay found at the craft store. And the little painting was a copy of a vintage Halloween creation. 

3. UGH, THIS PHOTO MAKES ME LOVE HALLOWEEN SO MUCH! I created these creepy heads with Styrofoam head forms found at Joann's, cheesecloth and liquid starch. That creepy mummy just might be my favorite.

4. The things you can do with that liquid starch and cheesecloth combo, y'all! This was a vintage music box thingie that I transformed into Frank and his Bride. Can I get a gig where I just sit around and make Halloween stuff 24/7? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE AMAZING! 

5. When I found this old jewelry box at the thrift store, I KNEW I had to make it into a book of spells. Weird? Probably! But I'm telling you, Celluclay is magical and you can make just about anything with it!

6. On that same thrifting trip, I found a bunch of bottles and decided to craft potion bottles from them!

7. I've got my eye on you. All of 'em! How-to video included in this creep-tastic EYE POPPING blog post...sorry, I had to. 

8. What I really love most about creating is taking something boring and transforming it into something insane. This was a little "Country Store" bird house type thing...that I completely spook-i-fied. I love the little light at the top! Details here. 

9. Wow, you're such a chatterbox! Did I mention that I love creating with Celluclay? Okay, lemme tell you what it is: it's basically a paper pulp type of clay. It comes in dry form and all you do is add water. I love to add it to an armature, whether it be one I made or one I've thrifted. Once the creation is dry, I usually paint them all black and dry brush the color on top...I love the antiqued look it gives. Details on these guys can be found here. 

10. Yes, in case you are wondering, that IS a candy corn tree. More deets on that in a second. First, can we talk about that eye-popping dude? Loved creating those creepy skulls!

11. Gangster Bats! Beware...they'll give you an offer you can't refuse. 

12. The Halloween creation that started it all...these guys! I made them back in 2015 and they are still my most favorite thing! LOOK at those faces, so silly and happy. Details here.

13. The Bride has ALWAYS been my favorite...mostly because I find the actress, Elsa Lancaster, so striking! This was so much fun to paint...I need to paint more, I miss it. Mixing all those different tones tho? NOT my favorite!

14. Is it even fall without Day of the Dead creations?! I think not...they speak to my love of color on these cloudy days filled with crunchy brown leaves. These planters were so fun to paint!

15. We travel a lot during the fall...mostly to our haunted house events. I love to have a craft on hand to work on and embroidery is usually my go-to. This reversible necklace was created during one of our Halloween adventures.

16. Hosting craft nights is one of my favorite things...something I don't make the time to do right now...but hope to in the near future! My artsy friends and I created these guys on a craft night a couple years ago and they are still my favorite. 

17. Decorating a candy corn tree counts as a fall craft, right?! This tree is from Treetopia and it's just about the best thing ever. I have a rainbow version in my art room!

18. I've never officially blogged about my Hitchhiking Ghosts painting inspired by Disney's The Haunted Mansion because I felt like I never finished it! But I kinda don't mind it in it's ghastly ghostly state...and I'm pretty sure I'm just too lazy to finish it.

And there you have it! My Top 18 Fave Fall Crafts! I'll be continuing this lil series with my fave fall art projects for kids and, of course, my fave fall ensembles. Yay! It's fall, y'all! 

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In the Art Room: Spooky Starry Night

Before I chat about this lesson, I gotta give a big ole shout out to fellow Art Scout Troop Leader and good buddy Ginger Pacer. When I saw a version of this project on her Instagram (her's is super cool and involves a lot of paint exploration which I love), I knew I wanted to give it a go. However, I'm under a pinch of a time constraint with this project so I knew I needed to adapt and make it work for me. For that reason, I decided to go with a smaller format than we normally work with (these bad boys will be 9" X 12") and use an oil pastel resist. Here's the complete video'ed lesson (my apologies for the title being left out at the beginning. The kids had a good laugh at that!):

In a one hour session, my fourth graders each got their photo snapped with these wings, watched the first half of the video, drew their skies, watched the second half, painted and some even had time to sketch ideas onto dry erase boards. It was action backed...despite the fact that I was battling a monster migraine that caused me to lose sight in my eye (anyone else get these?). Since my 6 Advil and migraine meds were not kicking in, I was so thankful to have the video to do the work for me. However, it did mean that my usual Wednesday night Art Teacherin' 101 will be postponed until tomorrow. So, y'all come back now, ya hear?!

I do have a SUPER HOT tip for you until then...every fall, I bust out my Haunted Mansion CD  that was originally recorded in 1969 and sold at Disney as a souvenir for the ride. We play this over and again in my room in the fall for my older classes and you can seriously hear a pin DROP. The kids LOVE the slightly spooky and silly tale that lasts about 30 minutes. I noticed that during their free time, my kids were illustrating the story and I thought, HOT DOG! We need a haunted house project. So, when I saw what Ginger was up to, I was super stoked to heavily borrow her idea. 

So here was my little example I cooked up. 

Side note: I used to read chapter books to my students as they worked and they loved it. Their favorite are the choose your own adventure types. However, it was hard for me to help kids and provide feedback while reading. So switching to audio books has been a game changer in my room. I've recently invested in more (the Radio Theatre series is a fave) and I'm excited to play The Legend of Squanto to my students as we approach Thanksgiving. I'll keep you posted on that one, I've got to do a teacher preview first.

Back to the project! True story: when I mentioned the use of puffy paint in the video today, the kids literally cheered. They truly are my artists, I tell ya. 

Here's what they managed to knock out today. 

This kid cracked me up: "We used watercolor in my old art class but salt!? No one ever told me about SALT! Look at it!" 

Apparently, I say the words, "I say 'Go For It'" a lot in my art room because in the video, where I do say it a couple of times, the kids said it along with me. 

 I was thrilled to see the variety of takes on this project: vertical or horizontal format; round stars or star shapes; variety of mark making. You give them fluorescent oil pastels and they'll go to town, these kids. 

 So much yesssss.

 Next up: we'll paint the black silhouettes and add puffy paint. 

Our final day will involve using the silver sharpies which I don't anticipate taking long. A quick project to wrap up this study is in the works. 

Until then, pet that sweet black cat in your path and have fun!

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Weekend Adventure: Wicked in Williamsburg

This webby bridge is one of the only means to enter or exit the spookiness of Busch Gardens Williamsburg's Howl O Scream. A family that was desperately trying to leave the park (their wailing children just couldn't take it anymore) was getting no where fast when their little girl refused to exit the park via the "scary" bridge. Knowing the will power of a wee one, that fam might still be there.

 A couple weekends ago, hubs and I took a weekend trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, aka Colonial Williamsburg. And while I'm mildly interested in history, we didn't go there to see how butter was churned or how America came to be. 

Oh no, we went for something much better than that:

Haunted Houses. 

Particularly the ones found at the Busch Garden's Howl O Scream event.

Now, I'm sure you've heard of Busch Gardens...but did you know that there are two? The one in Tampa is probably more famous because of it's proximity to Disney. It has an African theme. The one in Williamsburg has a European theme. This Big Ben-esque clock tower can be found at the front of that park. I love the spooky bird decorations. Hitchcock woulda been proud.

 We decided to hit the park first thing on a Saturday morning. They have a brand new roller coaster, the Verbolten, that we wanted to check out (and by "we",  I mean hubs and a reluctant me). I actually had a pretty embarrassing scream-fest-freak-out on the ride when it zipped into a dark tunnel. I just knew it was going to blast off from zero to eighty miles per hour (it didn't), so I flipped the Crazy Switch, complete with high-pitched wailing and arm/leg flailing. Hubs kept yelling, "What? Am I missing something?" The dad and his kid in the seats in front of us turned around and laughed at me. 

So embarrassing.

After that experience, we hit the coaster Griffon, which is easily one of the most frightening (at 205', it's one of the tallest coasters in the world) and best roller coasters I've ever been on. For a look-see, check out this youtube video (particularly minute 1:15) to get the idea.

 I love that every corner of the park was decorated for the occasion. Inside the building on the left was a fantastic dinner show that was like a spooky cabaret set in the 1920's. On the right is the French area of  Busch Gardens that looked as though it was been taken over by a rat-infested plague.

I debuted my Horror Flick dress at Busch Gardens. I was thrilled when folks complimented my dress. It was such fun to wear.

 After a short trip back to the hotel for some rest (we knew we would need our energy for the half dozen haunted houses and shows that evening), we returned to find a pretty spooktacular event. It was great fun and the perfect start to our tour of Halloween Haunts.

Hubs and I waiting for a show to begin.

 I just hollered up the stairs to hubs, "how long have we been going to these Halloween things, anyway?"

"Hmm. Not sure. A long time. Maybe 10 or more years?"

You'd think after that amount of time, being chased by a dude in a leatherface mask wielding a chainsaw would get a little, I don't know, redundant. And, to be honest, the chainsaw dudes don't actually freak me out anymore (but just to be kind, I do give 'em a good scream. It's the right thing to do). But there's always something that does. Freak me out, that is. That's what keeps us coming back for more.

We did do our time in Colonial Will'burg the following day. The weather was perfect and the sights were so sweet...the complete opposite of the previous evenings horrors.

Like this cute shoeless milliner crafting a hat. In a haunted house, he would have been creating the hats out of faux flesh and wielding a chainsaw. Just sayin'.

Or these lovely Colonial style hats...that would have been worn by zombie Colonial girls slashing the air with axes and carrying headless dolls. For example.

Precious scene of a carriage ride from long ago, you think? In a haunted house, the carriage driver would be headless, the horse would be a skeleton and the passengers would be fluffy McDonald's-eating tourists. Hey...wait a minute...

Delightful debutantes out for a Sunday stroll? That's what you think. Just wait until they turn their green witchy faces around and...

 Oh, my bad. Musta been thinking of those other demonic debutantes. Sorry, ladies. How 'bout a picture?

We came upon this fun farmer's market, complete with an impromptu hoedown.

...Little did we know, they were playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", waking up this beauty of a beast. Dude, maybe we should play "Devil Went Down to the Dentist." Just sayin'.

 Wait a minute...are you STILL reading this blog post? Now that is frightening. 

Thanks for dropping by. I hope this has inspired you to check out your local Halloween haunts or even the bigger ones at places like Busch Gardens or Universal. I promise, you won't regret it!

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